I was pleasantly surprised early in the day when Cathy sent over this article announcing Carnegie Mellon's official mascot. Late last year, a committee co-headed by Jen Church (great House Fellow, now Dean of Student Affairs) was created to help settle the mascot debate once and for all. In the 107 years Carnegie Mellon University has been around, we've been operating without an official mascot.

Some of you may think it's trivial but coming from a high school with an insane amount of school spirit I was dumbfounded when I arrived at Carnegie Mellon. There was nothing but a pattern to rally (and there wasn't much rallying) around (I guess it's a bit better than the NYU Violets, but they do have Violet D. Bobcat) and attendance at the football games were overshadowed by the crowds that gathered for the local high school games played on our field. It's a step in the right direction, now if we could only revive the gridiron glory days of Carnegie Tech, heck, if Northwestern and Berkeley can do it why shouldn't we?

Back to the mascot, a Scottish Terrier developed with SME Branding - I wonder if the students, especially those majoring in the various design fields were given a crack at it. I think the illustrator really captured the following traits:

...known for its keen, alert and intelligent expression. Its temperament is described as determined and thoughtful while its physical aspects exemplify strength, power and agility in a small package — many traits that are attributable to the university itself.

But what of the name? Will he be called Scotty? Andy? If someone names him Tarty I'm going to go ape-shit.

Winning the Darpa Urban Challenge is great (let's not make too much fuss about getting our butts kicked by Stanford in the previous Darpa Challenges, even though we were the best funded team). And as for the Solar Decathlon... maybe we'll come close to winning next year. But what would really get me excited would be again, a Top 25 football team. The mascot is a start...

Somebody give me a high-five for not titling this post, "Who let the dog out!".